Nilza's Baja

[baja5]

remember, the plate marked "pass" goes on the drivers side.

Actually Herbie is telling the truth. Alot of people seem to need to put the one marked "pass" on the drivers side for proper fit and alignment. Don't know why. Theoretically they should be the same if you flip them over. Maybe it's bolt hole alignment.

[ajdenette]

Danny he is in Aus doesnt that mean he shoud put it on jis pass side

[baja5]

Danny he is in Aus doesnt that mean he shoud put it on jis pass side

I forgot about the right had drive thing... Good call!

[nilza]

Now get to work

Going to a winery tomorrow, I guess that might be a little counter productive

[pickstock]

looks good nilza
Specially the fact its registered in aus
What wheels are you using btw?

Not exactly what i want to build, but inspirational none the less

[nilza]

There are a few things on it that the transport department would frown upon ( the coil over conversion Plates will probably be the most obvious ones. But not being an everyday car even the engineer didn't seem too fussy. The biggest reason for going to the trouble of keeping plates on it the best I could is so I can get permits for the beachs, islands and forestries (they all state the vehicle must be registered and roadworthy)
The wheels are a little of a shambles and along with disk brakes are the next to be replaced. The rears are just widened vw 15's. The fronts are 16 x 4 1/2 oldsmobile rims with laser cut centers from custom vw up in Queensland

[pickstock]

yeah im not going to get mine registered, but i want it to be almost street legal so i can do some test runs without being noticed, just on trade plates but still

im going to be running holden commodore rims and brakes with a bias controller, so i can have some strengthend stock rims with cut rally tyres, and nice mags with mild road rubber for showing off

[pickstock]

hey nilz are you going to be racing this beast?

looks well set up and with sign writing looks perfect hahah

[nilza]

Had a bit of a look into racing while I was building, but wasn't really any class that it would fit into without spending BIG money on engine and trans. I heard that south Australia was much bigger on there off road racing, might have a look at the classes available there

[pickstock]

classes are all the same all across australia, ive been involved in racing in a couple of states

im going to go racing in an old school built BAJA, torsion springs with extended shocks made for another make.
your right in the sense that to compete with the big boys you need a fair amount of money but if you go in the modified 2wd class/BAJA class you will probably do alright

[nilza]

Hmm. ........got a link to any info on that?

[pickstock]

www.cams.com.au

^^ remember the AU other wise its porn
http://www.offroadinoz.com
^ thats a western australian forum but has a fairly good home page as well

as for car clubs there are a load around check the cams site and you can be linked to most of them

[pickstock]

the 2 problems i see coming out of this would be engine and gearbox failures, the way youve built the car should be fine (cage might not conform though)
engine being that youd would want more power, and possibly destroy the engine in the proccess
gearbox because you want more power..................

there is talk of a historic style offroad series but atm thats just talk

[nilza]

As far as the cage goes, for racing I would want a little extra triangulation at the front and where my Jerry cans sit. I'm also pretty sure there are rules in play for historic race cars to have removable Door bars to allow road rego ( don't how cams sees this though) the engine will always be short term, on the cheap end of the budget I'm looking at a 4age motor into the 002 box, on the extreme end wrx motor and gearbox . ....... Mmm 5speed

At the end of the day, it's all possible but was never and plan and unless my toy budget has a massive jump I can't see it.

[nilza]

I finally got some time to get stuck into this thing, have parts just lying around is such a tease! The coil over conversion plates from eagle are quality and with a little bit of fiddling bolt straight on, and as hoped make adjusting the rear toe a breeze.


That done, moving to the front.
Unfortunatly changing the LR front arms for the Eagle arms which quite a bit larger in size won't be as easy as all that, as it turns out the shock mounts are in a different location. If I was to bolt them on the shocks will no longer travel in a straight line. There is a temptation to just do it, I guess the self alignment bearings at the top and bottom of the shock would take up the slack. The amount is only an inch over a shock that is well over 20" long, will have to try it later on and see.
Until then i have bigger problems, I had some play in the steering that I feel was getting worse (am I right in saying many of us have had that feeling?) I started on the out side with the hubs and found the speedo side had some play, as it turns out taken a glup of water and was chewing the bearings. I think its time to fill the hole and turn to GPS for speed indication, I always did hate replacing or repacking that bearing three times as often as the other.

Will decide during the week wether I add a disc brake kit to new bearings, but as i worked over the rest of the steering to find the play I noticed that one end of the rack was not sitting in its saddle correctly. Turns out Daewoo parts where not ment to baja




Nice clean brake huh?
Crazy as this may seem, I am not looking as this a a great problem. Will take it to work, have one of the welders put it back together, brace it while his at it and then heat treat the body. ready for round two. That or I will make a whole new body for it out of billet, will see what those with more knowledge that i have to say on monday

Although I would rather be driving it, it is good to be playing with the baja again ( 8 degrees C is too cold to drive a car without windows really anyways.